Gene Baldwin: Supreme Court gun ruling sends message to liberals

Posted: Monday, June 30, 2008

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court got it right: The Second Amendment is our constitutional individual right to bear arms, a right not to be abridged by local liberal governments. Its interpretation is crystal clear to all the "ban the guns" proponents, including our own Athens-Clarke County mayor and commissioners. Their aborted attempt to ban guns in all public parks was just an initial attempt in the ever-surging attempt at eventually banning all guns. They chose to ignore the U.S. Constitution and Georgia law. A message was sent to them last week that the Supreme Court stands fast for the constitutional right guaranteed in the Second Amendment.

The eventual confiscation of all weapons begins with some seemingly-innocuous law, considered not too much of an infringement, then followed with another law that further restricts individual weapons, then eventually a law similar to the Washington, D.C., restrictions struck down by the Supreme Court. Let's hope this Supreme Court ruling has stopped the "gun ban" stupidity.

The next step is to change more laws, both in Georgia and at the federal level, to provide for additional areas where a licensed gun owner may carry a weapon. The Georgia legislature recently has made a beginning on that front, with a law that allows a person with a gun permit to carry a weapon into eating establishments that serve alcohol and on certain modes of transportation. Now, we need a law that exempts persons, with a permit, from the draconian school-zone prohibition. Having a gun in your locked glove box when you traverse a school zone automatically makes you a criminal. That's ridiculous.

Maybe, just maybe, the liberal establishment will realize that criminals always will have guns. Disarm them; don't try to disarm law-abiding citizens. An armed citizenry always will be your last bastion of law and order.